


Nomenclature

by orphan_account



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-15
Updated: 2014-01-15
Packaged: 2018-01-08 19:39:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1136581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If Resembool issued birth certificates, they would have given his name as Edward van Hohenheim.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nomenclature

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt: "okay but in Brotherhood Trisha is actually married with a wedding ring on her finger in the flashback and stuff until after Hohenheim leaves? why did Ed write her as Elric anyway."
> 
> For this, I've taken some liberties in mixing Brotherhood and 2003 canon. I presume that the man's name is van Hohenheim [of Light]. I'm rewatching the 2003 series/CoS relatively soon so I kept this short.
> 
> Special thanks to Lapis Philosoforum's FalconKnightCordelia for dealing with my late night rambling on this subject. I'll probably return to this idea to write a full fic on it later, but the prompt bugged me enough mentally that I needed to try my hand at it.

Blue sparked beneath his fingers. Words etched themselves into the stone, gouging out gashes. _Trisha_ , he wrote. His brother knelt beside him in the rock plane transmuted from the midst of the flowery field; absentmindedly he wrought a chain of flowers in methodical motions, his green-gold gaze fixed on the gravestone. “It worked, Brother.”

“Mm, you were right about specifying.” Edward rubbed out the chalk circle with the soles of his shoes and then again with a wet washcloth. Quickly he sketched the circle and the triangular mark for _earth_ , adding in lines and shapes at the edges, and nodded at himself. He inhaled sharply until he could feel his ribs swell and pull his skin taut. Sapphire lightning. Erased, reset. He visualised the numbers in the stone, neat slices. The birth year culled from a conversation with Granny. The death year weighing lead on his shoulders.

His brother let the chain float down to the grass. “Brother.” His voice grew quiet. “Brother?”

“What?”

Alphonse bowed his head, chin touching chest. “Never mind.”

Instinctively Edward tangled his finger into his brother’s hair, ruffled solid sunlight. “Don’t worry. We’ll bring her back, Al. You can’t tell an Elric no.”

 

The gravestone bore their mother’s maiden name.

 

The lieutenant colonel watched him work steadily through the papers, pausing every so often to rub at his sore wrist and flex the cramped muscles in his fingers. The boy’s eyes glinted with fire. With, the lieutenant colonel supposed wryly, flame. Grimacing at the apparent prodigy’s handwriting, he added _bleach_ to his potential gift list for the boy’s eventual superior.

“And if you’ll sign this form,” Mustang said levelly, gesturing at the crisp sheet at the bottom of the stack, “we’ll be done here. My lieutenant should’ve picked up the tickets to Central.” He settled back in his chair and took a long drink from the complimentary wine (whatever he thought of this backwoods borough, he held nothing but respect for the matriarch of the Rockbell establishment). “Thank God. I’m tired of this case.”

The boy glared at him with such narrow-eyed fury that Mustang might actually have been intimidated if not for the pipsqueak’s miniature form. Like a housekitten trying to imitate a lion. “I’m sorry I was throwing up blood for a year instead of fucking _three_.”

“Watch your mouth,” the lieutenant colonel snapped in retaliation, but the words left an acrid taste on his tongue. Frowning, he occupied himself in examining the consent form, co-signed by Mrs Rockbell acting as “stand-in guardian”.

A scribble on the name line caught his attention: _Edward v Elric_ , with the middle initial scratched out wrathfully enough Mustang could barely make out the shape.

He glanced up. “That your middle name?” The pen exploded in the boy’s hand and sprayed ink over them both, and over the paperwork. Groaning, leaning back in the chair, Mustang drained the wine flute. “Start from scratch. I have a feeling I might as well ask for a cot.”

 

The young men shook hands. His golden-eyed future partner gripped his hand with a painful intensity, but he matched the strength as best he could, his thumb pressing down on a powerful tendon.

“Glad I could meet you.” He smiled brightly. The other man’s eyes had hazed over with a curiously dull glow, like sunlight through morning fog, though he could discern a hint of a smouldering blaze somewhere beneath the gilded surface of his irises. “Er, what did you say your name was, again?”

“Edward.” The man coughed. His eyelids fluttered. “Edward Elric.”


End file.
